After rejecting the evidences of such tales, we find nothing in the authentic records of Charlemagne which gives the slightest reason to suppose that Chivalry was known, even in its most infant state, during his reign. Though his great system of warfare had that in common with Chivalry which all warfare must have--feats of daring courage, heroic valour, bursts of feeling and magnanimity, and as much of the sublime as mighty ambition, guided by mighty genius, and elevated by a noble object can achieve--yet the government of Charlemagne was, in fact, any thing but a chivalrous government. Too powerful a hand held the reins of state for Chivalry either to have been necessary or permitted; and in reading the annals of Eginhard, his life of Charlemagne, or the account, given by the monk of St. Gall, we find a completely different character from that which is visible in every page of the history of the knightly ages. We find, indeed, that Charlemagne, according to the immemorial custom of his German[6] ancestors, solemnly invested his son Lewis with the arms of a man. A thousand years before, in the forests of the North, his predecessors had done the same: and Charlemagne, one of whose great objects ever was, to preserve both the habits and the language of the original country[7] free from amalgamation with those of the conquered nations, not only set the example of publicly receiving his son into the ranks of manhood and warfare, but strictly enjoined that the same should be done by his various governors in the provinces. But this custom of the Franks, as I have before attempted to show, had no earthly relation to knighthood. Were nothing else a proof that Chivalry was perfectly unknown in the days of Charlemagne, it would be sufficient that the famous capitularies of that monarch, which regulate every thing that can fall under the eye of the law, even to the details of private life, make no mention whatever of an institution which afterward exercised so great an influence on the fate of Europe. Nor can we trace in the annals of the surrounding countries, a mark of Chivalry having been known at that period to any other nation more than to the Franks. Alfred, it is true, invested Athelstan with a purple garment and a sword; but the Saxons were from Germany as well as the Franks, and no reason exists for supposing that this ceremony was in any degree connected with the institutions of Chivalry. There have been persons, indeed, who supposed that Pharaoh conferred knighthood upon Joseph, when he bestowed upon him the ring and the golden chain, and probably the Egyptian king had fully as much knowledge of the institution of Chivalry as either Charlemagne or Alfred.